Red Roses

England Women are the best rugby team on the planet. Twenty three wins in a row. Two wins over New Zealand and a Six Nations campaign where they put fifty points on everyone except France. The World Cup is next. The secret? 90s Eurodance, second chances and accepting ‘the hurt’.

At a manor house in Berkshire that was once a monastery and a prison for a Scottish Queen, the best rugby team in the world, England’s Red Roses, are hitting the gym. Or rather, half of the best rugby team in the world – England’s backs – are hitting the gym. The forwards have finished their session and are heading for the April sunshine.

The vibe is upbeat. The players are fresh into camp after a weekend off. In four days’ time they will face Ireland at Welford Road (and win 69-0 in front of a record crowd en route to winning a fourth Six Nations title in a row).

The euphoric beats being played in the gym reflect the mood in the camp. Pumping through the speakers comes Eiffel 65’s 90s Eurodance hit Blue (Da Ba Dee), Daft Punk’s floor filler One More Time and the lockdown sensation Mufasa and Hypeman’s Friday.

When Coldplay’s My Universe comes on, the gym dancing hits its peak. Scrum-half Leanne Infante gives it the disco fingers, fly-half Zoe Harrison responds with some Tik Tok-worthy twerking.

Shifting tin is also on the menu. Full-back Ellie Kildunne is doing pull-ups with an extra 10kg strapped round her waist, and centre Amber Reed is chest pressing 22kg dumbbells.

Wing Lydia Thompson is working out by herself, throwing a medicine ball against the wall before forward rolling her way down the side of the gym, with form so good she wouldn’t get deductions from an artistic gymnastics judge.

At one point four Red Roses descend on the shoulder press rack to cheer on full-back Emma Sing, who, from the sounds of it, has nailed a new PB.

With her 100th cap beckoning this weekend, Emily Scarratt focuses on isolating her hamstrings with a stretching band, whilst trying her best to ignore Infante’s distraction techniques. Even off the field, England’s first choice number nine is living up to the positional stereotype that scrum-halves are like toddlers at a birthday party trying sugar for the first time.

England are tapering their gym work at this point in the Six Nations. That means higher weights, but fewer reps: “harder basically!” laughs fly-half/centre Holly Aitchison as the session comes to an end.

The gym session follows a full-blown, full-contact training session this morning, designed to replicate the intensity of a test match, and then go further.

And in truth, it will be tougher than what Ireland can offer this coming weekend. Such is where the Red Roses are in 2022, hardly any team in the world can live with them, let alone match them.

They certainly haven’t beaten them, not since July 2019 anyway. Since a 38-13 loss to New Zealand in San Diego, England have won 23 matches in a row, beating New Zealand twice, France eight times, all their other Six Nations rivals, as well as Canada and the USA. They haven’t, however, played Australia nor South Africa. And while things are moving quickly in those countries, it’s fair to say that neither are true contenders in women’s fifteen-a-side rugby.

One more win for England and they will own the longest winning streak of any England team ever, overtaking the 23 wins accrued by the England team from 1992 to 1997.

The success of the Red Roses is down to a variety of factors. Firstly, England have been awarding professional contracts to players for longer than their rivals [the first fifteens professionals were in 2016], and, secondly, England boasts the most competitive domestic league in the world in the Allianz Premier 15s, not only a hotbed of emerging talent for England but also attracting the best from across the world to compete with and against. These significant advantages have provided a platform for success. But it is just a platform.

What truly sets the team apart is what happens when 35 players descend on an England training camp. This is where England’s game – or the ‘game model’ as head coach Simon Middleton likes to say – is worked on with the fervour of a science community closing in on a discovery.

So, what’s the formula behind the Red Roses’ success? “The mental and physical resilience in the side now is just on a completely different plain to where it’s ever been before,” Simon Middleton tells the Rugby Journal, from a picnic bench on the grass at Bisham Abbey’s National Sports Centre. “It’s taken about two years [to improve resilience]. And we’re not there yet, not by any stretch.”

Simon has been England’s head coach since 2015. He’s guided England to five Six Nations titles in that time, and a World Cup final in 2017, when England lost to New Zealand 32-41 in what is regarded by many as the greatest women’s rugby match ever played.

That loss, combined with their loss to New Zealand in 2019, showed Simon where his team needed to improve. “New Zealand. 2017. Second half. New Zealand physically dominated us,” he says of the World Cup final. “They physically dominated us in 2019 in the Super Series as well. We got out-muscled by teams that were physically better than us, or physically had more about them.”

Simon wanted England to toughen up, to be more resilient.  “In a practical way, [one of the things we did] is getting players to understand the difference between being injured and being hurt.

“If you’re hurt in a game you get up and get on with it,” he explains. “If you’re injured you can’t get on with it. I would say previous squads I’ve had probably didn’t know the difference between that. Not consciously, but probably subconsciously, [they] played on being hurt, using being hurt as an excuse to maybe pull from a session or not participate fully in a session. We’re a lot tougher now. The way we train is incredibly physical so training is quite painful, I would imagine.”

It’s not an approach taken without the very best support and understanding of how the professional athlete’s body works. “We’ve got an incredibly professional and diligent medical staff,” he continues, “and they recognise the difference between injured and hurt and we’ve worked together to understand that we don’t have to be on to the field every time a player takes a knee.”

Managing ‘interventions’ is key. “The way we drive training is that we can’t have interventions during training,” explains Simon. “An intervention comes about if a medic comes on to the field. If a player is injured, you are on like a flash, but if it’s a player getting up shaking their hand or rubbing their elbow, we don’t make interventions, you stay off the field.”

And it’s also being done with full awareness of where the line is drawn. “We’re really conscious that from the medical side, you have to be absolutely on it,” he says. “So we outlined what we wanted to do, and also the language we use.

“We don’t pander to players,” he emphasises. “If they’re coming with an, ‘ah, I’m not feeling so great today’, it’s like, ‘no, you might not be feeling well but it’s work day, get on with it’. There’s a lot of stuff now where players would have got away with it previously, in terms of, probably either giving them an excuse to not be at their best or to not train at all.”

Even at England level, an ethos that runs through first teams the world over is applied: ‘no train, no game’, only the difference with this side is that they mean it, without exceptions. “The other thing is now, if they don’t train, they don’t get selected,” says Simon. “[With] the strength and depth in the squad, you can’t afford to miss a training session. You can’t afford to train badly, let alone miss a training session.

“So, it becomes self-perpetuating,” he continues. “You build up the resilience of the team, you build up the squad depth. You get what we’ve got at the moment which is unbelievable competition for places.”

The obvious question is how Simon and his management team balance this tough love approach with creating an environment in which players feel comfortable flagging injury concerns, especially around head knocks. “It’s distinguishing between what we know are critical non-negotiables and what are just players probably feeling not quite up to it that day,” he explains. “Now, if they feel not up to it, they’ll just get on with it. But head injuries are so... the repercussions of getting them wrong now are huge.

“Because we understand that, because we understand how fundamental to what we do player welfare is, players know that if they come in with any sort of suspicion of concussion or anything related to their mental wellbeing, or their mental health, they know to flag that because that’s something we put a massive amount of stall on because that is something you can’t afford to get wrong. So it’s just understanding what the parameters are.

“And understanding what comes with rugby that is acceptable, in terms of the bumps and bruises and some days you’re not going to be feeling on top of the world, and other things that you’re getting red flags that you know yourself, is not great.”

Simon puts England’s upgrade in resilience as “100 per cent” the key driver behind the Red Roses’ success over the last twelve months.

While fire and brimstone is demanded of England players in training, plenty of care and attention is paid to ensuring they can relax effectively away from the training pitch.

And that’s exactly what Ellie Kildunne and Helena Rowland are doing now that work for the day is done. The pair are heading out for an ice cream in the picturesque local town of Marlow which, courtesy of the Thames running through it, is the best place to stay cool on a hot spring day like today.

They kindly ask the Rugby Journal’s team of photographer, writer and content producer whether we’d like an ice cream ourselves. Their offer is politely turned down, but regretted instantly.

Instead, it’s a coffee with Marlie Packer, who has to get her interview done early so she can make a medical appointment in the afternoon.

If any one player embodies the resilience Simon Middleton is after from his players, it’s Marlie.

The Saracens flanker is the heartbeat of any side she plays in, a player who blends destruction in defence with terrific attacking skills and who, aged 33, might be performing better than ever.

Marlie is also the only mum in the England squad, so being in camp means being away from her son Oliver and her partner Tash.

What evidently drives Marlie is the prospect of going to a third World Cup later this year and becoming a world champion for the second time, having started at openside flanker when England won the 2014 World Cup final.

Doing so would also avenge the loss to New Zealand in the 2017 final, when Packer also lined up on the openside.  “At my second World Cup [2017] I knew what that feeling was like [to win] and to lose it and the way we lost it as well... it was a great game of rugby, on Saturday night TV, Ant and Dec prime time…

“All I can remember is coming off the pitch and apologising to my mum.

“I want to feel how I did in 2014 but for it to be a quality game like it was in 2017,” she says. “There’s nothing better than beating New Zealand in New Zealand.

“To go out there and do it in their back yard for a World Cup will be pretty special. But at the same time, we can’t look away. We’ve got a tough pool, we’re playing France, we’re playing Fiji, they will be physical games.

“My home life is very different to what it was before,” she admits. “Hopefully they’ll [Tash and Oliver] get to watch it. They won’t come out for it but hopefully they’ll get to watch it.”

How does Marlie deal with being away from her son when in camp? “I do miss home and I do miss being with Oliver but also, when I’m here I’m here, I’m Marlie Packer, the rugby player. And then when I’m at home, I’m Marlie the mum and Oliver and Tash come first. It’s my switch. I miss them and I speak to them every day but I make sure the balance is right.”

Her team-mates appreciate the fact Marlie is a mum. “The girls love it though, they genuinely do love it,” she says. “Jess Breach is massive on it isn’t she?” Marlie directs the question to lock forward Rosie Galligan, who has joined Marlie on the picnic bench. Rosie nods in agreement.

“After the weekend,” continues Marlie, “they are like ‘did you have a nice time with Oliver?’, ‘Show us some pictures’, so that’s really nice.”

“I think there’s been a switch in Marlie’s mentality,” chips in Rosie. “Off the pitch, normally you would still be rugby-orientated, but now you get more of a balance of Marlie on the pitch verses Marlie off the pitch.”

Rosie starts to giggle, and Marlie laughs as well. The unspoken subtext is that Marlie is less of a rugby nause these days. Not something she’s willing to accept was ever the case, but a point she doesn’t have any time to argue, she jumps up to leave. “Sorry, I’m having two fillings at the dentist,” she explains. The procedure won’t affect her performance this weekend against Ireland, however, as Marlie goes on to pick up the Player of the Match award.

Now it’s just Rosie, who has her own story to tell. This Six Nations has seen Rosie return to the England fold three years after winning her first cap against Ireland in the pre-pandemic world of 2019.

The reason behind such a delay? Meningitis, a shattered ankle, followed by a loss of love for the game. But now she’s back, motivated, and circumspect about those dark times. “I didn’t realise how serious it was [meningitis] at first,” she begins. “Until they said to me that if I’d come in a day later, I could have been amputated from the waist down.”

Rosie contracted meningitis in September 2019. She started feeling “really heavy” while staying at Zoe Harrison’s house the night before a Saracens game. Then, halfway through the night, she started being sick and lost the ability to walk.

She called her dad who came to pick her up, but it was her mum who spotted a tiny rash on her leg and called the non-emergency line, who immediately blue-lighted her to hospital, with medics treating her for meningitis and sepsis as soon as they could get their hands on her. “For seven days I was in bed, not able to move; any time I did move, the pain in my legs was another level,” explains Rosie. “I was on a lot of strong drugs just to get through the day. On day three or four I had to have a lumbar puncture, a big needle in your spine, to check what meningitis it was. Mine was bacterial, which is worse than the other version. I was lying on my side and the lady said, ‘I’m really sorry but that needle wasn’t quite long enough, we’re going to have to do it again’.

“I just started crying to myself, and thought now is the time I’ve got to take every hour, day, as it comes, and not think about anything else,” she says. “I completely scrapped thinking about rugby, I was just thinking about getting better and staying alive, as such.”

It was the least of her worries at the time, but Rosie’s illness forced her to experience the isolation of quarantine before the rest of the world did. “No one could come near me. Every time my mum and dad visited, they had to wear full apron, masks, gloves.

“My family were incredible the whole time, they didn’t show a glimpse of worry, they would come and play Scrabble with me, and I would always lose because I couldn’t stay awake.”

Rosie came out of hospital on day ten and amazingly, just a few weeks later, was back training at Saracens.

But a few games into her return, in January 2020, she landed awkwardly from a lineout and shattered her ankle.

While lying on the pitch, sucking on gas and air, she knew she was going to be out for a long time, and resolved to do the comeback properly this time, telling us that on reflection she rushed back into action after the meningitis.

Four pins, a plate, and a scaffold were inserted into her ankle, and her rehab could begin. Rugby and the rest of the world, however, was rapidly grinding to a halt with the pandemic.  “In the nicest possible way, that was fantastic for me, because I hardly missed any rugby,” says Rosie.

Instead, she was doing physio from home, jumping off a two-foot high tree stump to build up the strength in her ankle. “It took me half an hour to jump off it the first time. My mum was saying, ‘come on you can do it’, and was saying, ‘no I can’t!!’

Overcoming the mental side was the hardest part, with Rosie being transported back to hearing her own screams every time she heard a crunching sound when going about her daily life. “I wouldn’t say it was PTSD,” she says, adding, “I think that’s too far, but I couldn’t go about my normal life for a while.”

Rosie made her return to rugby, not long after rugby itself had made a comeback, but she soon realised that something wasn’t right. “I was probably in a bit of denial that I should be starting [for Saracens] but looking back I probably shouldn’t have been. We had two very good Canadians come over who earned their shirt. And I didn’t enjoy my rugby and I think everyone could tell I wasn’t happy. And that’s where the change to Harlequins came in this season.”

The move across London has been a revelation for Rosie, launching her back into England contention. “Harlequins is the reason as to why I’m sat here today,” she acknowledges. “Clubs have their own way and their own personality.

“Saracens is made up of a lot of feisty characters, who all want to win and, at the end of the day, you all want to win, but at the same time, Harlequins has that more family feel. Moving home as well has given me a better balance to life. I’m training a lot better, and I actually want to push myself and I think I lost that a bit after coming back from injury.”

As a recent recall to the England fold, Rosie is not one of the England players on a full-time contract, and so juggles rugby with a job in marketing and communications. It’s a situation she’s very happy with even though she’s hopeful more contracts will one day become available and that she might be able to “get involved in that.”

For now though it’s head down. “That’s when I do best, when I don’t think too much about the future and what could happen. That’s the thing I’ve learned over the last couple of years, If I’m playing with a smile on my face, I play a lot better.”

As our chat with Rosie winds down, England’s media manager Emily is busily preparing the next chat with Mo Hunt, as well as the location.

It’s decided that the best place to go would be across the perfectly mown lawns of Bisham Abbey’s grounds, to the benches by the manor house. It’s where the majority of the wedding pictures are taken when couples tie the knot here. And with good reason, it’s a dramatic yet calming setting, with the Thames flowing by.

The history of the manor house is storied. Once the site of a monastery long since destroyed, the manor house was built 800 years ago as the home for a group of Knights Templar. It was then used as a prison to detain Queen Elizabeth of the Scots, the wife of Robert the Bruce. And a couple of hundred years later, it was part of Anne of Cleves’ divorce settlement from King Henry VIII. An irony that is hopefully kept hidden from newlyweds when considering the Abbey for their special day.

These days Bisham Abbey is – as well as an ironic wedding venue – one of three national sport centres owned by Sport England, and is a regular host for Red Roses camps.

Scrum-half Mo Hunt looks completely at ease in the environment. A far cry from a year ago when she would, “cry on the way in, and cry on the way out.”

“I’m a bit soft, I’m an emotional person,” explains Mo. “It was no one’s fault, it was just the headspace I was in. I was being a sap on the environment and anyone who knows me, knows that’s not me. I’m someone who comes in and wants to bring the energy to the group, that sort of thing. And I just wasn’t me. And Scaz [Emily Scarratt] always says ‘nothing changes if nothing changes’ and I think I needed to change something.”

Mo made a radical change, handing back her professional contract to England and stepping back from Test rugby. “The week after I’d said that I needed a break, it was like a weight had been lifted and I was playing free,” she says.

Unfortunately for Mo she then got injured but that moment in itself made her realise that, aged 32 at the time, she wasn’t done yet with international rugby. “As soon as I got injured I knew I wasn’t done because I was gutted,” she says. “I ruptured the ligament that was holding my tibia and fibula together, so quite a significant injury.”

The comeback trail included Great Britain sevens and tearing it up for Gloucester-Hartpury. An England recall came soon afterwards, in time for this year’s Six Nations.

So, what’s camp been like on her return? “The sessions are brutal and there’s no let up, it’s not like each week it gets easier, if anything it gets harder [through the Six Nations],” she says. “It’s pretty epic.

“But I don’t know if I’ve necessarily seen a massive difference in it [the intensity of the sessions since returning to the England team].

“One of the big things England are driving at the moment is the tempo we’re trying to play with and that’s one of the things I like to do the most, so I’m just hopeful that if I keep my head down, keep working hard, and see what opportunity arises… Fingers crossed I think I’ve done alright so far so we’ll see, we’ll see.”

Although camp hasn’t changed much for Mo, she has noticed a few differences in some of her team-mates, namely fly-halves Zoe Harrison and Helena Rowland. “To see how much they’ve both grown, for me that’s been the biggest thing.

“Both of them play slightly differently,” explains Mo. “Zoe is more, ‘sit-back-and-pin-the-field’, whereas Helena very much enjoys the running game which we obviously know, so it’s how to get the best out of both of them.

“From a nine’s perspective, I love playing with both of them, they’re both unbelievable athletes. Other than clapping at me, which Zoe does a lot when she wants the ball quicker! They’re both class.”

As the afternoon stretches on, and the weather continues to deliver its best spring sunshine, it’s time for some players to pursue life outside of rugby.

For prop Maud Muir and flanker Sadia Kabeya, both twenty, that means hitting the books. Maud, the destructive Wasps prop, can ill afford distractions as her dissertation for her sport and exercise science degree at Brunel University is due in in just over two weeks.

Unfortunately for Maud, there are quite a few distractions doing the rounds, although as Ellie Kildunne is still off buying ice cream, that’s one less thing to worry about. “We have a study group but sometimes it doesn’t go down very well because Ellie thinks that she is the best studier in the group but she gets distracted and distracts us all within one minute,” says Maud.

Sadia starts laughing and adds: “She got her phone taken away by the study group didn’t she?!”

“I had to banish Ellie,” Maud concludes.

Who else is still in the Red Roses study group? “It’s Maud, me, Helena [Rowland], sometimes Lucy [Packer],” says Sadia. “But she’s…

“Flaky,” Maud chimes in.

“Me and Maud are the chairwomen. If it works, it works really well.”

With a promise to keep things brief so Sadia and Maud can continue to study, we ask what life is like in camp for two relative newbies (both players having only made their debuts in the autumn).

“Everyone is so nice aren’t they,” Maud says to Sadia. “You wouldn’t realise we’ve just come in. We are pretty in and part of the team now, which is quite cool.

Sadia adds: “You know all these the big names, who you may have played against, but never with. There’s people in your position who you look up to all around you, so you hold yourself to that standard.”

For Sadia, one of those players is Marlie Packer – who should now be under the dentist’s drill if she made it to her appointment on time. “To be training with Marlie as one of the best 7’s in the world, that was my big ‘wow,’” she says.

For Maud, the biggest thrill came from meeting fellow prop Vickii Cornborough, although the reason behind her adulation has more layers than you think. “Sorry if this is off topic,” apologises Maud, “but in French at school, we had to pick someone we idolised. I had no idea of anyone in the England squad at the time so I Googled ‘prop in England squad’ and it came up with Cornborough. So, I talked about her for my French oral exam! I talked about her but I had no idea who she was, or how she played.

“But now, playing against Cornborough, scrummaging against her, and learning stuff from Cornborough, I’m like ‘wow, I chose well’. So Cornborough is probably the person I looked up to most.”

As newly minted England internationals at a time when the women’s game is booming, Maud and Sadia’s profiles are sky rocketing. “I think it’s particularly strange for us because it’s two things at once,” says Maud. “We are really experiencing that ‘bloody hell’ feeling, we’ve got so many interactions and playing in front of 15,000 people from being at Wasps three years ago when we were playing in front of ten people. That trajectory is crazy.”

Maud has even gone viral. “There was a Tik Tok of me bumping Nelly [fly-half Helen Nelson] in the Scotland game. I got a lot of shares from that!”

For Sadia, the investment in broadcasting of the Allianz Premier 15s has brought her to a much wider audience, especially for one performance in particular, scoring the winning try for Loughborough to beat Exeter at Franklin’s Gardens. “I think there was an article that got put out after that game and someone who I haven’t spoken to in ages, who I didn’t even know watched my rugby, sent me the link saying they’d seen it, and I was like, ‘wow, that’s crazy’.”

Sadia and Maud have both been hailed as long-term England prospects but both of them aren’t daring to look beyond Ireland and France, and trying to win a first Six Nations title.

Maud then has her dissertation to hand in, while Sadia has first-year exams to pass in her sport science and coaching degree at Loughborough.

Then there’s the end of the Allianz Premier 15s season to take on, followed by trying to make England’s World Cup squad for rugby’s global showpiece in New Zealand in October and November.

With so much going on, you get the feeling that 2022 might not go down as one of the greatest for academic achievement among the Red Roses study group. It might well, however, go down as the best-ever year for women’s rugby in England.

Story by Jack Zorab

Pictures by Danté Kim

This extract was taken from issue 18 of Rugby.
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